


call but there is only echo

by lindentree



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, Discussion of Abortion, F/M, Heartbreak, Kinda, Not Actually Unrequited Love, POV Gendry, Pining, Pregnancy, Pregnancy Kink, Unplanned Pregnancy, Unrequited Love, Unsafe Sex, this is extremely soft
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-12
Updated: 2019-05-12
Packaged: 2020-03-01 15:48:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,742
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18803404
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lindentree/pseuds/lindentree
Summary: Arya’s three weeks down the Kingsroad before Gendry’s head breaks the surface of his grief and disappointment long enough to realise what he’s done.Gendry stays at Winterfell, and has too much time to himself to think his thoughts.[Post-8X04 Arya/Gendry with a little background SanSan.]





	call but there is only echo

**Author's Note:**

> I've never written GOT fic so I'm sweating this a bit, especially because I wrote it quickly and it feels a bit messy and extremely soft, kinda like melting ice cream. I had to do it, though, because _these poor babies_.
> 
> Also, I don't actually think Gendry's an idiot, but at this point, he's certainly feeling like one, so there's a lot of that. Poor guy.
> 
> Work title is from "Halls of Sarah" by Neko Case, pretty much just because it's all I'm listening to right now.
> 
> Thanks to [ishie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ishie/pseuds/ishie) for reading and cheerleading. 💜

Arya’s three weeks down the Kingsroad before Gendry’s head breaks the surface of his grief and disappointment long enough to realise what he’s done.

He realises a number of things in the weeks after she disappears, of course. The forge is empty, most of the other smiths having died the night the dead walked and Arya slayed the Night King, and so he has a wealth of time alone to consider the many places he’s gone wrong.

First, Gendry realises the Dragon Queen’s act had everything to do with securing his loyalty and controlling any threats to her claim to the Iron Throne, and little to do with him, at all.

He realises that, regardless, he’s going to have to sort out how to be the lord of a great house, and he’s going to have to do it alone.

He realises he’s an absolute idiot, and Arya was right to reject his offer.

He’s heard folk call her Nightslayer and Dawnbringer, their hushed voices taking on the timbre of lore as Arya’s deed is woven into the songs and stories folk will pass onto their children and grandchildren. 

Arya Stark’s a legend, and he’s a bloody fool.

He’d like to blame his foolishness on drink, or the way his blood stayed up for hours after the dead fell to the ground around them, or the shock of the Dragon Queen’s announcement. But he’s quite sure he’s simply a fool. 

A fucking fool to think anything he had to offer would be enough to tempt Arya to his side for anything more than the comfort they found in each other when they were about to die.

But then he realises something else. Something worse. It strikes him in the forge one quiet evening, as he’s bringing the hammer down on the glowing steel before him: he’s done something he can’t undo. Something he never would have done, had he not fully believed that neither of them would live to see another daybreak.

He _came inside her_ , and she didn’t do a thing to stop him.

It wasn’t anything he deliberated at the time; it just happened, like all of it _just happened_. He wasn’t thinking, his mind gone blank, stunned, from the moment she kissed him and pushed him down.

Gendry didn’t have a single sensible thought the entire time. His brain reeled, trotting along behind her like a hungry dog, barely summoning the wherewithal to hold her off when she tried to shove herself down on his cock right away, before she was ready, before he could have even a moment to touch her. 

She’d watched him, crouching over his thighs, as he ran his hands all over her bare skin, trying to burn the feeling of her body against his into his memory. His thumb found the wet parting of her, the spot that made women quiver, that made Arya’s eyes go wide and her mouth drop open.

In a moment he was inside her, her slim hips in his hands as she had her way with him and he allowed every inch of it. His heart leapt and pounded at the surprised little sound she made deep in her throat when he touched her just so and she fell to pieces. He held her through it before tripping over her sudden pleasure and into his own, all of it over much too quickly.

She didn’t say a thing about it. They hardly spoke at all, after, for there seemed little to say. He recalls her wiping at the insides of her thighs with a corner of his tunic, but he scarcely gave it any thought, still too bowled over by what they’d just done.

Then there was no time to think of anything, as the world narrowed to blood and heat-slicked ice, the air thick with fire and ash and the stench of death. And when there _was_ time, when everyone had fallen to drinking and celebrating, all he could think of was finding her, because he finally had something real to offer her, a girl so high above a Flea Bottom bastard like him that she might as well have lived on the moon.

A girl who carefully, kindly broke his heart.

So it takes some time before he remembers how reckless he was, reckless in a way that might have had consequences for them both, had she not up and disappeared like a ghost. 

It might have had consequences, if she weren’t off getting herself killed.

He knows where she’s gone, and why, and he suspects others do as well, although no one speaks of it. No one in Winterfell asks after her; it’s as though she slayed the Night King and immediately tucked herself between the dusty pages of some history book, as if performing a legendary deed stopped her being a living person, as well.

She’s gone, and he knows somehow that she doesn’t intend to return, that the death of the Night King was not the end of anything for her. She left her home and her family to go find another of Death’s faces. To finish that damned list of hers, the one he’d heard her whisper to herself so many times that he can recite it from memory himself.

_Cersei. The Mountain. Cersei. The Mountain. Cersei. The Mountain._

Now, as the days in Winterfell slide by in a haze of grey dawns and long days of grief and rebuilding, he’s left alone in the forge, hammering nails and hinges instead of swords, for there are hundreds more weapons than warriors, now, but many doors and walls to be made for the living.

He’s left alone to miss her, and to wonder what might have been, had he found better words for her, had he not tried to snare her with all the exact wrong things. To wonder what she might have brought into their lives, had she not been so determined to die.

Gendry finds himself whispering a kind of list of his own each night, his chest squeezing tight, his throat dry and his pillow damp.

_Arya. Arya. Arya._

He prays for her, to whatever gods might deign to open an ear for him. He doesn’t pray for her to return to him, but for her to live, to go wherever she pleases, if only she won’t walk into the jaws of the lion. If only she will _live_.

_Please, please, please._

He keeps the forge glowing, churning out buckets of nails, and only in the deepest darkness of night does he allow himself to wonder how everything might have gone different, somehow, and how it might have felt to hold in his arms a babe that was half him, and half her.

A raven comes from King’s Landing: the Queen is dead.

A Targaryen sits on the Iron Throne once again, Jon Snow at her side. But already folk share long looks and raised eyebrows, and it wearies Gendry to know that there can be no peace where there is power to be had, and that he, too, has been drawn into the game. All because his drunkard father thought it was his right to stick it wherever he pleased, regardless of the consequences.

It seems it’s not only his looks he shares with the dead man who fathered him.

Gendry feels sick with shame, and sick with worry.

Surely, if Arya had killed the Queen, it would be known. If she’d died in the doing of it, they’d have heard. Surely, if she no longer lived in this same world, he would know. He would feel some sharper thing than only her absence from him.

 _Let her live_ , he whispers into the darkness. _Let her live, even if she never comes back to this place. Let her live, and let me not have burdened her with a babe, and that babe with the lot of a bastard._

Nothing answers.

Gendry makes horseshoes and gates for the livestock, locks for doors and chests. He’s clumsier than he’s been in years, since he was an underfed orphan boy, his arms not yet strong and the hammer and tongs unwieldy in his small hands. He smashes his fingers until his fingernails turn black and fall off. He singes the hair from his arms, and every part of him aches.

One day, Lady Stark comes to the forge.

The lady stands in the slanted beam of cool afternoon light that pours into the forge’s wide doorway. She looks about the space, taking it in as though she’s never seen the inside of this place before. Perhaps she hasn’t. She clasps her pale hands together at her waist, and looks at him.

Unsure of himself, Gendry awkwardly bends the knee, and then stands.

“Milady,” he says.

The lady Sansa doesn’t reply, but looks at him for a long moment, her cool eyes inscrutable. He fights the powerful urge to drop his gaze to the floor. He wonders about the good lady Catelyn, and what kind of woman she must have been to raise these women with eyes like maesters’ knives.

“‘My lady,’” she says, eventually. She tilts her chin slightly, and her tone becomes something approaching gentle, like she’s speaking to a child. “You’re the Lord of Storm’s End, now, and you ought to sound it, my Lord.”

It’s no admonishment; she’s trying to help him. He has no idea why it would ever occur to the Lady to help him, but that’s exactly what she’s doing, as she eyes him expectantly.

“My lady,” he repeats carefully, the tidy words round and awkward in a mouth that still feels all too common to even have this conversation with her.

The side of her mouth pulls up for an instant, and then flattens again, the expression appearing and disappearing like a bird fluttering by a sunny window.

“When do you intend to quit Winterfell and take up your duties at Storm’s End, my Lord?”

Nerves churn his stomach. He’s finally worn out his welcome, it seems.

“You wish for me to go, my lady.”

A tiny crease appears between her eyebrows. 

“You are welcome at Winterfell as long as you care to stay, my Lord. We do not have a smith here and I understand that the temper of your steel knows no equal in the Seven Kingdoms.”

Gendry knows that for the flattery it is, but he feels a foolish thrill of pride, regardless.

“You will always be welcome here, as I say,” Lady Stark continues. “Only, I assumed you would want to take up the seat at Storm’s End.”

Gendry considers lying. But the sharp way she regards him reminds him so much of her sister, and he knows he’d be caught out immediately, so he sighs.

“If I may speak plain, my lady, I don’t know where to begin. I’m no lord of men, or great houses.” Gendry looks about the ashy, filthy forge. “This is the only occupation I know.”

Lady Stark looks unsurprised, and nods.

“You are in need of a trustworthy household. By your leave, I can make inquiries on your behalf.”

He ought to be more shrewd, he supposes, and treat any help of hers with at least some suspicion. This woman has more experience and skill in these matters than he could ever hope to claim, and she didn’t go from being a prisoner in the Red Keep to the Lady of the North by the grace of chance. He ought to be watchful of how she attempts to influence him.

Truthfully, though, he’s simply relieved by the offer of help.

“I would be very grateful, my lady.”

Lady Stark nods, then clears her throat softly.

“My sister makes her way to Winterfell. We expect her in several days, perhaps a week, if the going is slow.”

Gendry’s stomach twists in surprise, and his relief is so strong it throbs through his body like milk of the poppy, his eyes pricking foolishly. He wishes he could look away, and be alone, for he doesn’t know what to say. He can’t think of a single thing that isn’t crass, mortifyingly soft, or liable to get him thrown in stocks. He settles for digging a canine tooth into the inside of his bottom lip, giving what he hopes is an appropriately neutral nod, and praying Lady Stark takes mercy on him and moves the conversation along.

Lady Stark, it seems, is no more given to mercy than her sister.

“I thought this news may be of interest to you, my Lord.”

 _Seven hells._

Gendry can feel heat creeping up his bare neck, and he swallows dryly, hating that he isn’t certain what she knows, and that he’s utterly inept at this game.

She seems to find some small measure of mercy for him, then.

“I understand you spent time together years ago, when my sister escaped King’s Landing, and I thought you may wish to see her again, before you depart for Storm’s End.”

Yes. Yes, he does very much wish to see her again, even if he cannot bring himself to actually face her.

“I’m in no great rush to leave Winterfell, my lady.”

“It pleases me to hear that, though I’m sure you will be welcomed warmly in the Stormlands when you do take your leave of us.”

Lady Stark turns to go, then, but pauses in the doorway a moment, and looks back at him.

“At times it’s easy to feel as though you are surrounded only by the untrustworthy. But you’ll find that you have friends, Lord Baratheon, if you know where to look for them.”

She leaves him.

Arya is returning to Winterfell, and though he knows already that he’ll stay until she does, if only so that he can see she’s well with his own eyes, he also knows nothing has changed. She doesn’t want to be a lady, least of all the lady of some neglected kingdom on the coast, and she doesn’t want to be married.

She doesn’t want him.

When she returns, he’ll no longer have a place here. He won’t stay; he couldn’t. The thought doesn’t hurt as much as he’d have thought it would, because she’s alive. She’s _alive_ , and she’s riding north, returning to her beloved home once again.

It’s enough. It has to be.

That night in the hall, he finds Ser Davos, and the smile the man gives him when he asks him to come to Storm’s End is enough to make Gendry feel for the first time that he may be capable of this, that this whole fool thing might be possible. That he could someday make a halfway decent lord.

Later, when he lays his head down on his pillow, he does not ask for anything at all.

Two days later, the shouts of men and the barking of dogs draw him out of the forge and into the yard.

Arya Stark has returned, and she brings with her Sandor Clegane.

She sits tall in the saddle of her black horse, a smudge of pale face and dark hair that blurs before his eyes. He swallows the lump in his throat, and takes a step back into the forge’s entryway.

As Clegane dismounts, Gendry sees Lady Stark come into the yard.

Clegane goes to help Arya from her horse, and that makes Gendry pause and stare harder, even as Arya bats the man’s hands away and says something sharp enough to draw a loud guffaw from Clegane, who backs off. She slides down from the saddle to land in the frozen mud, and hands the reins to a stableboy.

Gendry watches as Arya speaks to the boy, bending over to gesture at her horse’s fetlock. Her hair hangs down into her eyes, and he sees it’s all loose, and a complete mess from the wind. Movement catches his eye, and he sees Clegane step away from the horses and stop directly in front of Lady Stark.

The two regard one another without speaking. Something passes between them, the nature of which Gendry could not begin to guess, but it’s something that makes the corner of the Lady’s mouth turn up ever so slightly, and her eyes soften like the first melting day in spring.

When he looks away, he sees that Arya has turned in his direction, and is walking swiftly towards him, one hand on the pommel of the same slim little sword she wielded the day he met her in the dusty streets of King’s Landing. He resists the urge to turn tail and run, but only just.

Arya stops before him, and though it bores an ache into his heart to look at her, he does.

She’s beautiful.

Her expression is her usual cold mask. Dark shadows hang under her eyes, and her cheeks are sunken. She bears a scattering of cuts and bruises on her skin, which is even paler than usual. She looks exhausted, and he wonders when the last time was that she had a proper sleep. 

Her grey eyes are bright as they take him in, though, and she’s still _so_ beautiful.

“I need to speak with you. In private.”

Gendry blinks.

She’s been away from her sister and brother for weeks, she looks as though she hasn’t slept in at least as long, and she _needs to speak with him_.

Arya walks past him, into the dim forge, and dumbly, he follows her.

His eyes adjust quickly to the low light, and he finds her standing in the middle of the room, looking around her and taking in the barrels of hinges and nails.

“You’ve been helping rebuild Winterfell.”

“Aye.”

Arya turns to look at him. The mask she wore in the yard is gone, and her face is open. She looks even more tired than he guessed, and it’s clear something troubles her. She just stands there, looking at him, for several moments that feel painfully long to him.

“I thought you might have left for Storm’s End by now.”

“Not yet.”

Arya’s brows draw together. “Don’t you want to be Lord of Storm's End?”

“I don’t know if I do, or if I don’t. Never done it before. I wasn’t lying -- haven’t got the faintest fucking clue how any of it works.” Gendry rubs the back of his neck, feeling awkward. “But the Stormlands have gone to ruin without any order, I’m told, and it seems like someone ought to do something. I’m bound to cock it up, but seems like it’s my lot, anyway.”

Arya nods, and doesn’t reply. They watch one another, both of them guarded, and Gendry wonders how it can be that only weeks ago, they were as close as two people could be, sweat-slicked skin pressed together, breathing each other’s air, and now _this_.

“I’m not sorry I said no,” Arya says, finally.

Gendry swallows dryly, his heart aching, and makes himself shrug his shoulders.

“Can’t say I blame you. Wasn’t much of an offer for a girl like you.”

Arya frowns slightly, and for a moment she has that look, the one she’d always get right before calling him _stupid_. Only she doesn’t do that. She just watches him for a moment, and when she speaks again, her voice is very soft.

“I never thought about what might happen, after. All these years… I didn’t think I’d be alive. I don’t think I _wanted_ to be. But now…” Her voice trails off, and for the first time, she looks away, down at her hand where it still rests on the grip of her sword. “Now there are things I want to do.”

Gendry can only stare at her, stunned and foolish enough to feel hope stir deep inside him.

Arya looks up, and takes two slow steps towards him to close some of the distance between them.

“My horse threw me a few days ago. Spooked when a bird flew from a bush. Stupid animal…” She pauses, staring at him, and he can see her thinking hard. She swallows. “I took a hard fall. I thought I’d feel relieved, but I didn’t.”

“Relieved?”

“I fell on my arse. It hurt and the Hound got a bloody great laugh out of it, but I was fine, and so was… So was it.”

“It?”

Arya continues to stare at him, and he notices she’s biting her bottom lip, as though she’s nervous. He frowns, confused. What’s left in the entire known world to make this woman nervous?

Then, she reaches out and takes his hand, bringing it under her jerkin and holding it to the linen tunic covering her abdomen.

He can only gape at her, confused but becoming less so with every passing moment as Arya stares pointedly at him and presses his hand harder into the flesh of her lower belly. She’s slim, but where she was soft before, there’s now a firm swell smaller than the palm of his hand. 

“I saw a wise woman in a village in the Riverlands. She said I won’t be able to feel anything for some time, but she confirmed it.”

Gendry stares down at her, his stomach dropping like a hanged man.

“Are you all right?” he rasps, his throat dry.

Arya raises one shoulder in a shrug.

“It’s been a wearying ride, and the smell of food turns my stomach. My mother said once it was like that for her, with me. She couldn’t stand the smell of food... But I’m well enough.”

He nods, still fumbling around, trying to figure out what to say to her, trying to figure out what it is he’s feeling aside from raging panic. 

He did this. He really did this, exactly the thing he’s feared in the weeks she’s been gone. Exactly the thing he’s ashamed to have wanted. 

Seems he managed to snare her, after all, but the thought brings him no joy.

“The wise woman, she didn’t… You didn’t try to get rid of it?”

Arya’s expression doesn’t change, she just tilts her head slightly. 

“Would you have preferred that I did?”

Gendry huffs out a breath, agitated. “Isn’t my place to presume what women ought to do with the bastards men leave ‘em stuck with.”

That gets a proper reaction from her, as she exhales a sound almost like a laugh. When she speaks, her words are sharp but her voice is terribly soft.

“You really are stupid, Gendry.”

He agrees, certainly, but he’s unsure exactly what he’s being stupid about, at this moment.

“I didn’t get rid of it because I didn’t want to. The woman offered, and I thought about it, but I just… I just didn’t want to.”

Gendry doesn’t understand her at all, doesn’t understand how anyone could find themselves saddled with a bastard and not want to get rid of it.

“Arya, I’m sorr--”

“Don’t,” she interrupts, shaking her head. “I’m not sorry.”

They stand there for some time in silence, his hand still cupping her warm skin through her tunic, her hand still holding his wrist and keeping him there. Her thumb is stroking the back of his hand, and he doesn’t understand what’s actually happening in the slightest.

“What do you want to do?”

Arya looks up at him, her eyes soft, just like when he found her in the corridor and told her she was beautiful. Like he’s said something completely novel to her, something she’s never heard before.

“I should know, shouldn’t I? I’ve always known what I _didn’t_ want to do. Then for a long time I knew what I was _doing_ \-- I was surviving long enough to strike names off my list. But I’ve never… I don’t know what I want to do, Gendry.”

He wants to ask her again, but he tamps those words down before they can fall out of his fool mouth, and says something he hopes is wiser.

“If you ask it of me, I’ll stay right here and take responsibility. I’ll let your sister horsewhip me in the yard, if you like. Or I won’t tell a soul, if that’s what you want, and you can tell her and everyone else whatever you’d like, and I’ll beat the tar out of anyone who says a word about you.”

“Sansa knows.”

Somehow, that’s the most terrifying thing she’s said thus far.

“She does?”

“She does.”

Gendry can’t help it; his eyes dart to the doorway, half expecting to find Lady Stark and Clegane standing there with a set of manacles for him. Arya laughs, and the unexpected sound punctures his fear and fills his chest with a strange, nervous kind of joy.

“Arya, please. Help me. Tell me what we should do. Tell me what you want.”

His words chase the smile from her face, but her eyes are luminous, shining at him even in the low, grey light of the forge.

“I’m no lady, and I never have been. And I never imagined myself as anyone’s mother, but… But when I thought about it being yours, and mine, our own...”

There’s something in her expression that reminds him of the night he told her he planned to join the Brotherhood Without Banners, and she pleaded with him not to, to go north to Winterfell with her instead, to _be her family_.

She’s looking at him that exact same way, and his chest suddenly feels too tight to draw a breath.

“I don’t want to be the lady of anything. But the rest of it, the part about being with you…” Arya goes quiet a moment, her eyes searching his face. “The rest of it sounded all right to me.”

His heart pounding, Gendry musters the last bit of courage he has.

“I have to do something about Storm’s End. There are people there, innocent people who get no say in what kings and lords do, and I have a duty to them.”

Arya blinks and her gaze drops, but Gendry pulls his hand from her belly and grasps her hand in his. 

“But I’ll abandon it all to do right by you, if you’ll let me. I’m a fool, Arya Stark. I should never have asked you to be something I knew you didn’t want.”

“I don’t want you to abandon it for me,” she says, shaking her head. “I meant what I said: you’ll be a wonderful lord. A _good_ lord. There aren’t many of those.”

Discouraged, he scoffs. “Right. I’ll make a good lord just as soon as I figure out what that means and find someone other than Ser Davos to --” Gendry stops short and blinks at her.

“To what?”

“Arya, do lords have Hands?”

Arya stares at him, baffled.

“Most of them do, I suppose, but I never paid such close attention to my history studies to be an authority on whether or not most lords have had both of their _hands_.”

“No -- _Hands_ , like the Hand of the King, like your father. Do lords have someone like that?”

Arya shakes her head. “Most have advisors, I suppose.”

“What if you were that, to me? What if you came to Storm’s End with me, and you advised me? You’d never have to swear an oath to me, and I’d fully expect you to crack my head for me when I cock up, but you’d be free to do whatever you pleased, wherever it pleases you to do it. So long as you come back.”

Arya’s eyes are wide, and her mouth hangs open, and he sees he’s managed to render her truly speechless.

“I’d only ask you to make sure this little one knows how to handle a sword. But you’d be free. I don’t want you any way but free, Arya, I swear to you.”

Arya blinks, and shakes her head, but she isn’t saying no. Instead, she’s stepping into him, cupping the back of his neck in her small hands to bring his mouth down to hers. She kisses him carefully, and her kisses taste of her salty tears. 

After a moment, she wraps her arms tightly around him and hugs him, burying her face in his neck.

“Yes, Gendry. That’s what I want.”

He hugs her back, enfolding her in his arms, marvelling that she’s here, that she’s said _yes_ , that they’re going to find some way that’s theirs, and that they’re going to have a child of their own.

They’re finally a family.

-end-

**Author's Note:**

> ...I wasn't kidding when I said it was extremely soft. 
> 
> Whatever happens, we had more happen onscreen than I ever thought we'd get. Godspeed into the final episodes, folks. 💜


End file.
